I'm new to dvd authoring, and I'm having trouble getting smooth-playing MPEG-2 from a video source. The video is captured with a Media 100 card on a Mac system (.mov) and converted in TMPGenc to MPEG-2. It's a small clip, just under 4 minutes, basically a long commercial. Lots of graphics flying around, and video mixed with stills, etc.. The stuttering/hesitation in question is constant, but especially pronounced when a graphic enters the screen. I'm using CBR/7000, and I've tried all kinds of different GOP configurations to no avail. Any ideas on how to get this to play back smoothly on a set-top dvd player? I'm authoring and burning with ReelDVD 3.1.1 and a Panasonic a06/106d burner.

What are the specs of the original (MOV) file? Namely, what's the resolution and what's the frame rate? Stuttering can sometimes be caused by a frame rate conversion.

And are you importing the MOV file directly into TMPGEnc? I don't think TMPGEnc has support for Quicktime files. Try loading the file into Premiere (on a PC) and exporting it to TMPGEnc using a frameserver (see the guide in the "Guides & articles" section).

Also, I've heard that ReelDVD doesn't like open GOPs, so try checking the option to "close all GOPs", in TMPGEnc.

After a lot of experimentation, I've come to the conclusion that the plug-in that allows .movs to be imported into TMPGenc (there is one, but it's user-written), is simply not up to snuff. What happens is, you can see visible hesitation in the movie at each GOP. Since we're trying to keep the workflow as streamlined as possible, converting the Quicktime to .AVI first is not the preferred option, so in this case, I'm looking at Cinema Craft to see if it does a better job of conversion. Since you asked, the framerate of the source .mov is 29.97. We did notice hops in a couple of places when we changed the output to 30fps just for the sake of testing. I am aware of Reel's preference for closed GOPs, since it says so in the manual. Again, thanks.